caesar novus

I remembered Milan being a separate financial center after I posted. I guess I overlooked it because by chance it's been nearly deserted every time I pass thru (holidays?). Roman parasites must be what makes the hotels so expensive and a bad value - worse than Paris or even Venice, I think. I saw a TV show about gov't related visitors on astronomical freeloading accomodation budgets. You were too kind to bring up an "I told you so" on how the Chile earthquake had only a tiny fraction of fatalities compared to Haiti even from a quake 900 times more powerful (due to bldg codes, modern practices, etc). On the other hand, Chile is used to frequent strong quakes and I bet Haiti might have evolved low tech robust dwellings under a similar regime. Quake richter scales miss the point a bit because they measure the max power at underground epicenter. The power you experience is not only diminished by horizontal distance, but vertical (Chile's was twice as deep as Haiti). And a rarely mentioned point is frequently shaken areas like Chile and California have such shattered bedrock that they may not transmit shocks so efficently (except when loose material lets buildings resonate badly).

Well, then I wonder which "tribe" invented or at least popularized concrete structures. I heard the magic volcano dust ingredient wasn't limited to Vesuvius area, but also the Alban hills volcano (present day lake Nemi and ??) close to Rome. I wonder what other civilizations crushed by Rome donated stuff that Rome gets credit for. No, it can't be... Rome surely was the beginning and end of proper civilization!

Too bad... Chile just blew a big earthquake and much of the Pacific Rim is under a tidal wave warning: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1 with your local estimated wave arrival times detailed at bottom of http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/messages/paci...2.27.124623.txt

I'm gonna guess the basilica was a case of the Samnites being a copycat of the Romans while they were independent. Then the Romans siezed the building (and town) and gave it a further veneer of Romanicity by minor refurbishment. Sure this involves some copycat of the Greek colonial style by someone at some stage. Sounds more plausible than the Romans and much of Rome being inspired by the Samnites. Or maybe that lecturer has her dates wrong and the Basilica went up only after the Samnites were crushed.

I guess it's a half hour into lecture 4 and somewhat 5 in http://academicearth.org/courses/roman-architecture where she claims the fancy basilica in Pompeii was built by the Samnites before the Romans took it over. This seems mind-blowing because it is a full fledged multistory roofed corinthean columnated concrete megacomplex. http://www.vitruvius.be/pompei.htm and other sources don't seem to suggest the Romans stole it rather than built or significantly enhanced it. Is this plausible, and if any little tribe surrounding Rome could come up with such magnificant stuff... then what is so great about Rome? It's not just a case of everyone exactly copying the Greeks, because there are many non-Greek elements. In fact she points out that it was more in the last 10 years of Pompeii's existance where (especially the villa's) start loading up on Greek colonnades, etc. and evolving away from Etruscan and Samnite influences.

I heard a professor say that it was exactly 1 pair crucified per year, so although it was a needless gratuitious act... the bodycount seems tiny compared to what the plural form might envision. Not to justify animal cruelty (I'm vegetarian myself), but it can be somewhat refreshing when a culture doesn't 100% sentimentalize pets (and especially dogs just for being indiscriminately devoted to an owner regardless of their qualities). In my area there are silly helicopter rescues of dogs just for looking sick, even when that deprives scarce equipment from being available to rescue humans - maybe for a month if there is a breakdown or accident. Les Mccann put it in crude perspective with other urgencies in his antiwar song "Compared To What":

That claim by Univ Pitt sounds entirely illogical. Even if they could prove that all remains of children found had died from an excess of hugs and kisses, that does not contradict that undiscovered children were sacrificed. What they should say is that dribs and drabs of archeo remains do not happen to support the historical claims. If they did appear executed (as thought earlier), that would be proof, but the lack of of proven instances doesn't, er... prove anything. We should be vigilant against a modern tendency in the social sciences to force fit evidence into politically correct interpretations. They presume each culture's behavior must be equally altruistic (except for dominant western culture, which is "bad"). Our children or grandchildren will no doubt work to deny the existence of burning women alive in contemporary India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice) just as Putin has expunged Stalin's crimes against humanity in Russian textbooks.

Maybe I shouldn't be so negative about logistics. You can get darn close for practically no trouble or money from Naples, where any Romanophile might be poking around Pompeii anyway. At least off-peak, it appears the Naples-Catania overnight ferry will rent you a cabin and passage for less that the price you were probably going to pay for a hotel anyway. From there I think a series of rural busses are needed - the kind where I always get off at the wrong stop (drivers may only speak local dialect rather than Italian or of course english, I hear). Maybe a direct excursion bus is avail when cruise ships arrive. Catania is supposed to be a somewhat revolting base for a tourist, but you can daytrip to some Greek remains in Siracuse (I guess all these Greek remains were occupied by Romans later). I may use the ferry to Palermo instead with train excursions to the Greek temples at Agrigento and Segesta. Palermo is supposed to also be revolting but with more to do. I try to rationalize missing the Roman Villa as a 2D experience that can be best replicated on a computer screen slide show... I don't think much of the walls or roof remain?

After considering the nightmarish logistics to visit the famous Roman villa of mosaics in rural Sicily, I decided this high quality slideshow should be an OK substitute http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=sicily+casale

I should have noted that with a couple small exceptions, it appears to me that the other aquaducts mainly feed off the same river valley.They take a roundabout (presumably contour-following) path to Tivoli, then go various distances up the same stream. Could barbarians have put one diseased cow carcass upriver and give most of Rome upset tummies?

I wonder if the aqueduct that served the right bank of the Tiber (Trastevere) was really built to feed the private gardens and Naumachia of Augustus. To have a 33km structure built toward a water source that wasn't even drinkable, mainly to occasionally fill up a novelty maritime slaughter theater seems a major outrage even by emperor standards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_Alsietina I hope the aqueduct was more intended for efficient use of grey-water as described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextus_Julius...ribution_system . But I wonder how much undrinkable water was needed on that "wrong" side of the Tiber. I thought Rome was surrounded by rich villas at that time, and it was quite a long distance before food growing was common. Maybe the water was hoped to be drinkable, or at least bearable if the aqueducts sources in the opposite direction were somehow compromised (all others at that time went in the opposite direction serving the other side of Tiber).

Groan. I thought it was widely understood that many Eskimo were recent immigrants, and that neither a long-disappeared land bridge or seafaring was needed to explain this. Think ice bridge, scholars, ice bridge! They lived and and traveled along the fringe of the ice, which at times bridged the top of the Pacific and even possibly the Atlantic. Maybe the amazing trans-Atlantic simultaneous appearance of Clovis culture will be shown to have traveled FROM EUROPE by foot and occasional kayak along an Atlantic ice bridge, if only timid appeasers would stop giving away archeological remains to indian tribes who claim legal ownership of any old remains in North America.

Sculptures of emperors may be too good to be true... I wonder if emperors really looked that way, or if it was kind of a style either maintained by sculptor preference or their customers demand. I love how they can look decisive yet meditative - kind of a balance (not achieved by my avatar) rather than going for an obvious effect. I think both Greek and renaissance sculpture failed to attain this. Greek sculpture seems a tad "stagey" (either towards the stiff or the florid - and I think Roman plays made fun of Greek artsy-fartsiness that they suposedly admired). And renaissance sculpture seems too florid - I'm suffering thru a Michelangelo course spewing hours of praise on obviously dysfunctional pieces like his carvings of angels that look like hunkey male stripper dancers that were supposed to be matched pairs with some existing cherubic ones. ON THE OTHER HAND, I have noticed a surviving Italian preference for poise and not looking "below your station" in life... that may relate to "emperor poise". When travelling, sometimes I stumble into a special situation not really dressed presentably and kind of frantic from outside factors rather than what is appropriate for the occasion. Throughout most of the world, folks just let it pass without much notice, but strange (and opposite) reactions come from the UK and Italy (esp. northern). In upper class UK, they will pretend to be egalitarian and accepting, but can just radiate revulsion as if having to handle a dirty diaper. In Italy they can give curious but nonjudgemental reactions as if to say why is someone of such obvious quality not dressing and acting the part to the hilt - too bad you are wasting your considerable potential. The first reaction feels really creepy and two-faced, whereas the second approach is oddly seductive, complementary, and can inspire you to step up to the challenge.

Here's a list of special events starting up. Nothing Roman yet... http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y...sl=it&tl=en

Thank you, and now I found the official public announcement below. http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/opencms/...amp;pagename=52 Looking forward to special event announcements which will appear in the wrong end of Italy than my reservations... well, at least readers of this thread got a chance to get bargain reservations ahead of the hordes who may block everything up now. SPQR!

I guess that ties things together, especially for explaining an apparent exception in the American founders case. How was young George Washington with quite poor career prospects able to marry about the richest, smart in the EQ sense, and most beautiful catch in the land? The other founders also had their pick of the smart and beautiful, but were obviously upwardly-mobile ambitous young law students. There has been a lot of gushy praise of female genius spouses of the founders (like Abigail Adams) although the above referenced book apparently puts it in less P.C. and more human perspective. Well, Martha had previously landed one of the richest men in the land, who soon died and left a fortune. Now she could consider someone "fit and healthy", and young George Washington apparently had charisma like nobody else. Actually his later generalship was mostly a string of muddles and defeats, and he was mainly respected for radiating inspirational leadership rather than good decisions. Oh, he had persistance and later amazed the world at emulating Cincinnatus and giving up first presidency of the US rather than becoming a king - putting the ideas of the enlightenment into practice in a major country for the first time since republican Rome I reckon.

TRANSLATION HELP PLEASE!! http://www.unsabeniculturali.it/DIR_GEN_VA...rcolare_N.9.pdf For some reason I can't run this pdf memo into google pdf translation or even into text (can you?). *** IS IT SAYING APR 16-25 IS FOR SURE "CULTURE WEEK"? *** Is it saying final arrangements or announcements wait for March 16 (like the one time openings?). Normally this is announced by now in http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/index.html

From my observations, there may be an element of truth to the video. There is a demographic of young women who find themselves with a lot of social power due to Poise, Brains, and Whatever (sort of 3 graces, but let's call it PBW) and wield it according to fashions and opportunities of the times. I have been pretty amazed to see military men in the US go from about the least targeted decades ago, to become highly targeted by PBW. When I was young, military men and their haircuts were very, very unfashionable to PBW women. Instead I found this PBW demographic in an elite engineering environment, of all places. The wives and girlfriends of phd engineers would use their connections to get secretarial jobs, and they were truely awesome and overqualified in every way. They just held the place together with brains and charm. Very soon everything switched around. The press (eg. womens magazines) declared that military haircuts were fashionable now, so these men were fair game for PBW. Secretarial jobs were eliminated from said engineering environment, and capable women rose up the normal meritocracy in other career tracks. Actually, younger PBW seem to gravitate to be non working spouses/gf of dashing military men. This smells like underachievement, but engineering may not be all that fun compared to fishing for fine DNA for your children. I anticipate skepticism on this point by those who haven't seen spouses greeting or saying farewell to the comings and goings of Navy ships or other troop movements, but the reality seems a surprising contrast to politically correct assumptions. I could make some pithy observations about how the PBW demographic appears to work differently in environments of Algeria, Egypt, and India where the stakes can seem even higher, but I didn't stay long enough to confirm impressions. Instead lets look at the "girls of the US founding fathers" http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Lives-Found...s/dp/0061139122 . From a talk by the author, I gather the 1700's PBW flocked around emerging lawyers. Their love letters survive where the brainiest bombshells of the US colonies baited and torment the upcoming heros of the American revolution. Some of the stodgiest or sentimentalized founders either married or loved and lost the top "hotties" (his word, but actually including IQ and EQ) of the land. Reality can be amazing, and non-politically-correct explanations should not be prematurely ruled out.

Aha! It looks like the disappearing military side of the History Channel has re-emerged in a Military History channel http://military.history.com/global/listing...sp?NetwCode=MHC The good news is that Rome appears well represented, as well as other conflicts outside the 1900s. The bad news is the channel seems to specialize in quirky reruns in dated styles. I get it only in low def, and at weird times relative to the hour (they don't even keep to their posted tiimes). I think this is a way to recycle stuff that attracts few advertisers, who now flock to History documentaries about lumberjack or trucker rednecks. They just charge it to your cable bill, so be on the lookout for Rome stuff you might be paying for anyway. Advertising keeps TV accountable, I suppose. Now the free spending demographic apparently isn't interested in History any older than a few months ago ice-road or tree harvesting season. Similarly, the Travel channel has almost entirely excluded any travel content except for (on-the-road) Food. Imagine if they would spend one show a week on Roman archeology, but no... their demographic wants what goes in the mouth rather than the brain. Accountability leading to mediocrity isn't all bad; it also prevents excesses. I heard a good case made about why oil states like Russia, Venezuela, etc tend to have such bellicose gov'ts... with oil money gov'ts don't depend on taxation of their middle class, and therefore aren't accountable to the moderating influence of that population's interests.

Since this thread is living on, I can vouch for that Oxford book except for it's exclusion of sites of greater Rome, which are mandatory daytrips today. To include Tivoli, Ostia, etc you can also get "Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide" translated from famous scholar Filippo Coarelli http://www.amazon.com/Rome-Environs-Archae...i/dp/0520079612 At first glance it appears even drier with a wall of words and fewer diagrams. But the narrative is quite engaging and makes you feel like on a private tour with a personable expert. Not the typical omnicient pronouncements, but full of "must have been" and "probably" on the one hand and witty Latin quotes for the better known stuff. The archeo diagrams seem very well done except they seem to omit any recent landmarks, so in some cases you can't reference where the old stuff is in todays town (like downtown Tivoli as opposed to the Villa). Caveat: havent gotten past first glances yet.

Puzzling to this ignorant observer as well. I wonder if we have any independant confirmation of his repeated claims of fighting against overwhelming odds. He does seem to be a self-invented ambitious genius, and this came to his detriment in his innovative approaches ignoring/disrespecting traditions, which angered some. But unlike a Napoleon for example, he had a slow start... witness his bemoaning being an unknown at the same age when Alexander had slaughtered far and wide. I find the recent proposal by one of Italy's top cops intriguing, that Caesar intentionally exposed himself to the daggers of Brutus (sent his guards away when he was warned of the plot), based on his ambition to be remembered heroically rather than for a humiliating fatal illness he had supposedly picked up. Probably not at all accepted by the mainstream tho.

Maybe not the ideal topic to plunk this in, but I don't fully understand this announcement about Pompeii and google streets view anyway: http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/M..._272501365.html http://maps.google.it/maps?f=q&source=...,245.17,,0,2.38

It sounded like the Hatian leader peeked into my post pointing out how modern centralization increases vulnerability to earthquakes, and he announced the Hatian capitol should become less dominant. I think it is wise when a country splinters off it's political capitol from it's economic capitol, like Washington DC from New York City, Brasilia from Sao Paulo. Think of the comprehensive catastrophe if a Rome, London, or Paris were hit. I wonder why so many earthquakes are in the news that are beyond the "Pacific ring of fire", which wikipedia quotes as "About 90% of the world's earthquakes and 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. The next most seismic region (5

Still I would guess their (civilized yet vulnerable) living situation was more a statistical aberration across ancient space and time, and old fashioned situations were typically more forgiving with quakes. P.S. I hear modern Turkish Antioch is ripping most of their underground ancient ruins apart in particularly reckless development. IIRC vastly most quakes and vulcanism are around the Pacific rim (California, Alaska, Japan, Indonesia, etc), where ancient peoples typically lived in forgiving structures. The underlying mechanisms have recently been proven by their volcanos emitting vast amounts of a kind of carbon or element that comes from sealife. The spreading basaltic seafloor is dense and heavy so dives under the buoyant granite continents. Oddly the wet bio slurry of seafloor is a catalyst in turning hot underground rock into propulsive magma, and much of the Pacific rim ends up with lookalike volcanos and fault lines from this. So vulnerability to pacific rim quakes is more a modern curse of making high rises, as well as needlessly bleeding money from upgrade measures by greenhouse loonyness. They worry about tiny amounts of avoidable carbon, while volcanoes (and farm animals for that matter) dump out infinitely more. They look in alarm about sinking volcanic Pacific islands, although that is a known earth crust process thru the ages where basalt must sink vs continental granite must float (submerged dead Hawaiian islands stretch for thousands of miles, millions of years old, not victims of weathering).

OK, now is around the time Italy announces if and when there will be a spring Culture Week. Usually this extends beyond free admission to museums and archeo sites, but many normally closed sites are open for one day only! If you see any notice of this please post (may need some translation help for the special openings). P.S. One of the compensations of hot days trudging thru Roman brick and marble (besides gelato) is the super refreshing carbonated fruit juices Italy has. I noticed the US "Safeway" chain actually imports some of this from Italy although not of the best value. I tried to home-make this with CO2 at first, but settled on a simpler approach they use for gourmet ginger ales. Just flick some yeast into a bottle of fruit juice! You recap it instead of venting, so neglible alcohol is made - it just makes bubbles, clouds up a bit with sexy flavors, and stops the reaction when it pressures up (then you refrigerate). Also puts some drama in your life in avoiding creation of a fizz bomb.